at OpenHelix

A genome a day

I want to say ‘keeps the ? away” but can’t think of anything. This is just a quick post. Mary’s first line on the corn genome post, “sometimes it feels like ‘another day, another genome‘ round here got me to thinking”, it isn’t so far off the mark. According to GOLD there are 905 ongoing eukaryotic genomes (according to Entrez Genome Project, it’s 225, but those are only ones reported to NCBI). The cost of sequencing and completing a genome has drastically decreased. For example, Illumnia recently reported sequencing a human genome in 1 month for $100,000.

Now, that 1 month/$100,000 is optimal, to say the least. You’ve got the best sequencing machines, a very focused project, money, a completed known genome to work from, etc., and of course some genomes are larger than others, etc. But let’s take a real rough estimate (anyone have new stats on that?) of one new eukaryotic genome now takes 1 year to complete on average. And roughly space those 905 genomes out. It would mean that yes, starting sometime in the next few months, we will indeed be getting- on average- one new complete eukaryotic genome a day over the next 2-3 years. (of course that all depends on what the definition of ‘complete’ is)

And we haven’t even discussed bacterial and archeal genomes, there are over 1800 of those projects in progress…